Award-winning author on everything from chewing gum to aging disgracefully

I dream most nights and sometimes I have several dreams per night. I love dreaming; I look forward to it. I only wish someone would invent a machine that would record dreams so you could replay them the next day although I can usually remember most of my dreams.A lot of my dreams involve snakes but strangely there is never any fear associated with the snakes even in the one dream in which I was bitten. In that dream, I was in bed and a snake was biting my arm but my arm was protected by a thick sleeve, like a dog bite protective suit. I wasn’t afraid of the snake even though it was trying to bite me; I was focused on working out how to get rid of it without waking Steve, who as usual was asleep beside me completely unaware of the problem.

In another dream, I was ‘gardening’ on a large mound of barren dirt then all of a sudden the dirt moved and a snake came out of the mound. That was it. And my most recent dream this week: I was in a hallway and at either end of the hallway there were snakes. At one end were King Cobras curled up ‘resting’ and at the other end, small slithering black snakes. In my analysis of which way to go, I was thinking that while the small black snakes appeared less formidable, they could be baby Taipans and more deadly so I decided to approach the Cobras which allowed me to pass without moving. When I relayed this dream to Steve, he felt compelled to tell me about Snake Island. I don’t know why.

Snake Island is more correctly known as Ilha de Queimada Grande, an island off Brazil near São Paulo. It is uninhabitable because for every square metre there is at least one Golden Lancehead, a unique species of pit viper with a fast-acting venom that melts the flesh.

The island did once have a lighthouse operator who lived there with his family. One night, snakes entered through open windows and started attacking the man, his wife and their three children. They ran from the lighthouse but were bitten by snakes that dangled from tree branches. Their bodies were found spread across the island when a navy vessel stopped to make a routine supply drop. This is the source of nightmares and I’m waiting for it to manifest in my dreams. Thanks, Steve.